


Help

by a_loser_s_noodles



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Also ignoring the canon around the SWT, Alzheimer's Disease, Azula (Avatar) Needs a Hug, Azula (Avatar) Redemption, Azula (Avatar)-centric, Badass Katara (Avatar), Bisexual Katara (Avatar), Bloodbending (Avatar), Characters are in their 30s, F/F, Firebending healing, Happy Azula (Avatar), I'm kind of ignoring what we know of the adult Gaang to make my job easier, Katara (Avatar) Needs a Hug, Katara (Avatar)-centric, Lesbian Azula (Avatar), Mai and Zuko are young parents, Minor Hama & Kanna, Minor Mai/Zuko, Minor Sokka/Suki, Minor past Azula & Mai & Ty Lee, Minor past Azula/Ty Lee, Multi, Non-binary Toph Beifong, POV Azula (Avatar), POV Katara (Avatar), Polyamorous Katara, Post-Canon, Protective Azula (Avatar), Schyzophrenic Azula, Southern Water Tribe, Southern Water Tribe reconstruction, They're decentralised groups they aren't ruled by a Council that makes no sense, nobody's cheating in this house
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-04
Updated: 2021-01-04
Packaged: 2021-03-13 14:21:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28529868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_loser_s_noodles/pseuds/a_loser_s_noodles
Summary: Twenty years after Sozin's Comet, Katara is shocked when the fallen Princess of the Fire Nation shows up on her doorstep and offers to help with the reconstruction of the Southern Water Tribe.
Relationships: Azula & Katara (Avatar), Azula/Katara (Avatar), Hama & Katara (Avatar), Kanna & Katara (Avatar), but the focus is on azutara, minor Aang/Katara - Relationship
Comments: 7
Kudos: 49





	Help

Katara hears the snow storm roaring outside the igloo, shivers and sticks her hands in the steam rising from her pot of fish soup. She’s gotten quite good at making that recipe. On lucky days she even believes that it tastes just like those evenings when Mom and Dad would make spooky stories out of oil lamp shadows. Gran-Gran would be so proud if she knew her grand-daughter was learning the old family traditions.

She sighs as she fills two wooden bowls.

“Gran-Gran? Here’s your dinner!”

Resting on a pile of brown pelts is her dear grandmother, absent-mindedly looking into the distance. She tilts her head in Katara’s direction but the dark eyes look right through her.

“Thank you Kya, that’s very nice.”

Katara’s given up on reminding her that she’s not Kya. Sometimes she wonders if Kanna herself still knows who Kya is. It’s a needle through her heart every time that loving voice calls the wrong name, but as usual she smiles and kneels next to her grandmother. Carefully, she lifts the bowl up to her lips and helps her drink from it.

She could give her the bowl and allow her the autonomy to drink on her own, but Kanna’s hands are so shaky that she’d need bending to prevent spilling, and Katara doesn’t bend in front of her grandmother anymore. Not since she started forgetting. She couldn’t bear to see _that_ look on her Gran-Gran’s face again, not even once.

* * *

After Gran-Gran has finished her dinner, Katara brings her own bowl soup to a boil and sips it while looking over the week’s mail. She’s already read it all, but it warms her heart regardless. Sokka and Suki have left their house on Kyoshi Island to work with Teo and his father in their workshop in Omashu. The reminder that she won’t have them over for lunch this Fifth Star Day (1) like she’s used to stings. Toph complains about her students and hopes the one she dictates her letters to is a better writer than he is a bender. It’s entertaining for sure, but word from her is always impersonal, because there has to be an intermediary. Katara misses the genuine Toph. Then there’s a letter from Zuko, announcing that Mai is pregnant and inviting Katara to Caldera in a few months to see the child. It’s handwritten, which is unusual for the Firelord. Katara smiles at the smudged ink on some of the characters, betraying a little too much enthusiasm. To the right of the parchment, Mai’s distinctly thin and delicate brushstrokes express her warmest regards and polite hopes to see Katara again soon. The parchment is dry and cracked, Katara has to handle it carefully lest she break it. She wonders who she could leave Gran-Gran with while she takes a trip to Caldera.

The last letter is from Aang. He’s doing his annual tour of the Avatar Temples, and at the moment he’s visiting Guru Pathik. He describes the moss eating at the walls of the Eastern Air Temple, the silence when he’s meditating, and Katara wishes she were with him. Before he left, she gifted him a betrothal necklace she had spent weeks carving the emblem of the Air Nomads on. She brings a finger to her lips, remembering his goodbye kiss. They haven’t told anyone yet, not even Sokka or Gran-Gran. Until she sees Aang again, Katara holds onto the secret, and it makes the separation more bearable.

Even though she’s been a fluent reader for a few years now, she still feels proud every time she reaches the end of a text. The Water Tribes don’t really have a written tradition, so when she and Sokka left with Aang they had to painstakingly teach themselves how to read the common script that was used everywhere in the Earth Kingdom and Fire Nation. Ba Sing Se was a nightmare, she often found herself misunderstanding a character for another that looked similar and making embarrassing mistakes. She didn’t –and frankly still doesn’t– understand why there is so much explanatory writing everywhere. It just unnecessarily complicates the obvious. Even though, being the Avatar, Aang had advanced calligraphy and reading lessons, he shares her confusion at the overabundance of writing in the other nations. Sokka has gotten used to it, but it still makes Katara and Aang feel othered, like they could never fit in there.

Something the siblings simply can’t do, however, is write. They keep forgetting what the characters are supposed to look like, smudge the scrolls trying to correct themselves, most of the time their handwriting is illegible. When they put hours of work into it they can produce something decent, but it’s just not worth the effort. So Suki is Sokka’s scribe and Aang is Katara’s. Most of the time it works out but, at the moment, without Aang to connect her to her friends, Katara catches herself wishing she’d been able to learn as a child, when everything came to her so easily.

Actually, lately, it’s mostly for another reason that she wishes she could write. In Gran-Gran’s now near-constant half-voiced monologues, she sometimes starts recounting her childhood, and Katara hears things she never knew about. A few times now, Kanna’s even named and described traditional Southern waterbending moves, some of which Katara recalls seeing Hama perform when they fought. Every time, she tries to intensely listen, to burn every single one of Kanna’s words into her memory, but it’s not enough. She forgets, she misremembers, she gets the stories mixed up.

Katara often thinks of Aang looking into the Air Temple frescoes and saying he doesn’t know what they mean because he didn’t pay attention. Kanna is the oldest surviving member of the Southern Water Tribe, and Katara is terrified of the idea that so much of their history, of _her own_ history, will probably die with her grandmother. And she will be left with only her own botched version of it to tell her and Sokka’s children. She isn’t even sure she knows the rituals to appease the dark spirits well enough to perform them on her own, let alone teach them to anyone. Cultures based on oral traditions can only flourish when people are alive to tell them, and the Fire Nation knew it.

She’s pulled out of her thoughts by the distinct crunch of footprints in the snow, surprisingly close to her. There is no way someone is outside in that storm! She puts the letters down, inhales deeply to calm herself, and pulls the pelts on the entrance of the igloo to the side, letting the cold in.

The freezing wind immediately slaps her in the face, sharp darts of snow cut at her skin. It’s dark outside but, when she squints, something does seem to be moving towards her.

“Hello?” she tries screaming but her voice is muffled. “Is someone there?”

She quickly turns her head to check that Kanna is still asleep, and when she’s sure of it she throws her right arm forward, hardens her fingers as an extension of her palm, and evaporates all the snow between her and what is now clearly a humanoid silhouette. With the path cleared, she can even see a pale face under a hood.

“Come in! Quickly!”

Her visitor tries to run, but can only manage an exhausted limp. Katara holds out her other arm to continue shielding them, digging her feet into the snow to maintain her balance. Then she notices the flickers of white light mingled with the cold steam of their breath. She notices that their clothes are soaked but that there is no snow on them.

A firebender. They’ve been breathing fire to protect themselves from the storm this whole time.

What could a firebender be doing here?

And why isn’t their fire orange?

Her heart skips a beat just as the visitor passes by her to enter the igloo and she recognises that face.

The face she’s last seen contorted in tears and spitting out blue flames.

She grabs Azula’s wrist and pulls a water whip out of the snow on the ground.

“What. Are you doing here?”

Her voice is a furious hiss. She wraps the whip around the Princess’ body and closes in on her neck.

“I’m...”

Azula’s voice is raspy and worn. She hasn’t spoken in a long time and her cocky high-pitched tone is gone. Now that Katara has her face right next to Azula’s, she notices how much she has aged. There are premature worry wrinkles carved on her forehead, her eyes are ringed with purple, her face is emaciated and bony. Loose strands of dark hair escape from under the hood and onto her face, curled with grease and dirt. She’s not wearing her pink lipstick, but there are spots of mud on her cheeks. She reeks of sweat and rainwater.

“I’m... not going to fight you.”

Katara lets go, mesmerized.

“What happened to you?

\- I came here on foot. The trip was not pleasant.”

Azula throws back her hood to reveal a hirsute head of tangled hair. She’s barely recognisable.

“You know, you don’t need to stare at me like that. I’d like a bath too...

\- Why are you here? Didn’t Zuko lock you up?

\- He did, a good twenty years ago. I had plenty of time to hatch an escape plan. And, as for what I’m doing here...”

She sniffles with disgust, rolls her eyes, and then, of all things, kneels. She extends her hands –despite the dirt, the skin still has that distinct blue-blood smoothness– to Katara, with her wrists pressed together, the exact same way Zuko did at the Western Air Temple.

“I come to the Southern Water Tribe in peace. I want to help. I want to right the wrongs of my nation.”

**Author's Note:**

> (1) Fifth Star Day: in East Asia the days of the week are named after the Sun and Moon + the corresponding planets of the five Taoist elements. To make things easier for this fic I went with the following Anglophone translation: the days are named from First Star Day to Seventh Star Day for the 7 day in a week. Fifth Star Day (星期四) is the fifth day, so Thursday. Thanks to my friend Kaz (Preqame on here and on Twitter) for helping me out with this!
> 
> Also thanks also to Azutara CEO Kat (katwow on here, kyoshixrangi on Twitter and zukka-supremacy on Tumblr) for beta-reading this chapter!


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